American McGee's Alice - PC/Xbox 360

    American McGee's Alice is an Action/Platforming game that was originally released on PC in 2000, but was eventually ported to Xbox 360 as downloadable content for the Xbox 360 game Alice: Madness Returns. The game was developed by the now dissolved Rogue Entertainment, and published by Electronic Arts. Ten years before Tim Burton introduced us to his vision of a darker Wonderland, American McGee put his own dark twist on the classic tale. It is in this twisted version of Wonderland that American McGee's Alice takes place. I have played both the PC and Xbox 360 version of this game, though the 360 version is what I am heavily basing my review on as I just finished, it as opposed to the 9 years ago that I played the PC version.

    The game's story starts with a cutscene of Alice sleeping soundly in her bed as her cat accidentally knocks over a kerosene lamp. The lamp's oil slowly runs toward the fireplace, catching fire to the floor and everything the oil touched. By the time Alice is awoken by the light and heat, the flames have engulfed a majority of her home. Alice rushes to her parents' room only to find that their door is wreathed in flames. Helpless, Alice can only sit there listening to her parents' dying screams and pleas for her to leave the house. When the voices on the other side of the door cease, Alice is shown walking from her home into the night, obviously in shock.

    The scene then moves forward in time to Alice laying in a bed in a hospital's mental ward, bandages on her wrists. Alice stares at the ceiling vacantly until her stuffed rabbit turns to her and screams "SAVE US ALICE!" From there, Alice is thrown through time and space, only to find herself in Wonderland once more. Only this time, things aren't quite right in the magical world. Monsters roam the once safe woods and the once beautiful landscapes have been marred by terrible growths, even the very color of some areas has been sucked away. The familiar creatures of the world have taken on horrendous visages of twisted, tortured monsters. Soon, Alice is met by the rabbit, who tells her that she must save Wonderland from the evil Red Queen. With the help of the mysterious Cheshire Cat, as well as some other unlikely friends, Alice sets off to put things right in Wonderland once more.

The out-dated graphics make the creatures even more terrifying!

    American McGee's Alice has an interesting story in that the entire adventure is Alice working out her mental problems through the fantasy of Wonderland. Throughout the journey, Alice is faced with Wonderlandian forms of her mental demons turned flesh and has to overcome them one by one. It is easy to catch onto this theme early in the game, but characters toward the end of the story start to spell it out for Alice that she has to work out her guilt over her parents' deaths lest Wonderland (her mind) be ruined forever. Even the game's final levels and boss make clear that Alice's real enemy is herself.

    The game's visual and level design are great. The twisted version of Wonderland still has hints of its previous childlike innocence which makes its corruption even more disturbing. Rogue Entertainment did a wonderful job of designing characters and environments that have the "always unexpected" and bizarre, yet somehow understandable and charming, feelings that Wonderland should evoke; even with the dark twist on the world. Obviously, as the game was released in 2000, the graphics are extremely underwhelming when compared to modern games. Characters are blocky and textures are muddy, you'll get no argument here on those points. Luckily the great art design distracts you from these imperfections and allows you to become immersed in Alice's new Wonderland.

Says the guy who sits around smoking hookah all day...

    Alice plays as an Action/Platforming game. Players guide Alice through 38 levels across 9 different areas of Wonderland. In each level Alice must make precision jumps, solve puzzles, and combat enemies. Luckily, an arsenal of appropriately whimsical, yet deadly weapons are found throughout the game, which make dispatching the Red Queen's minions slightly easier. These weapons mainly take the form of toys (a jack-in-the-box that explodes, anyone?), though others are more sinister.

    Unfortunately, American McGee's Alice has numerous flaws which make the game less enjoyable than it could have been. The first major problem with the game is how loose the controls are. Alice moves very quickly on the ground and has nearly no ability to change direction while in the air. What results from this problem are hundreds of missed jumps as you overshoot your target or just plain misstep off a cliff. There are a few ways the game works to compensate for the problem such as the ability to point Alice's aiming reticule on a close-by platform and see the silhouette of two shoes, guaranteeing that Alice lands exactly there, as well as the game's save/load feature being extremely easy to use (save before making lots of jumps, trust me!). It seems strange to me though that Rogue Entertainment would put features into the game to help make their bad controls better instead of just fixing the controls.

*saves* I apologize in advance for all the broken bones, Alice.

    Another major problem I had with the game was the combat. I felt that often when I swung a melee weapon at an enemy the effective range was much shorter than the animation suggested. Conversely, the effective range of enemies' weapons seemed to be much longer than their attack animations would make you think. I would often cautiously walk up to an enemy in an attempt to whack them with my croquet mallet only to whiff and be hit by the enemy as I retreated. This problem lead to me solely using ranged weapons throughout the game, causing some weapons to be neglected completely. I also had a major problem with a number of the game's bosses. It seemed like every boss had one or two attacks that cannot be dodged, no matter what you try. This inevitable damage dealt out by the bosses can turn fights into a battle against time to do as much damage as possible to the enemy before it kills you with its unavoidable attacks, instead of the strategic balance of dodging and attacking that bosses in other games require. There is one boss near the end of the game that I defeated solely by luck after trying it over and over again-- very frustrating!

    I was also disappointed that there wasn't much exploration to the game at all. Every level in the game has one path from start to end and you just work your way along it. I would have loved to be able to explore a little more of Wonderland. As I mentioned before, the levels look great and are incredibly interesting, but the chance to see more, and maybe discover some amazing feature off the beaten path would have been incredible.

Want to look around a bit more? TOO BAD!

    Even with all of the problems with American McGee's Alice, I still really liked the game. It took a while to get used to the bad controls, and to just enjoy the game for its design, but once I got into that state of mind I found the game to be quite enjoyable. If you're someone who can endure some bad features of a game and still have fun with what's good, I'd highly recommend Alice. If you get frustrated by bad controls causing you to die repeatedly, by all means, avoid Alice.

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